The Venice of South America
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Estamos no Recife. E’ noite e a formosa Veneza da America do Sul, coroada de um diadema de luzes, parece surgir dos braços do oceano, que a estreita em carinhoso amplexo e a beija com amor.
We are in Recife. It is night, and the lovely Venice of South America, crowned with a diadem of lights, seems to rise from the arms of the ocean, which clasps her in a tender embrace and kisses her with love.
The prose blooms into full Romantic set-piece, and the tone-shift is the point. Recife — the port city built across rivers and islets, hence 'a Veneza da America do Sul', the Venice of South America — is personified as a beloved woman crowned with light, embraced and kissed by the ocean. After the plantation's cruelty, Guimarães paints a city as tenderness itself, the sea holding it 'em carinhoso amplexo' where Leôncio held Isaura in shackles. The contrast is deliberate: the same words the book has used for possession and force — arms, embrace, holding — are here purified into an image of love freely given. The lavish description also does the practical work of the serial novelist, dazzling the reader and marking that we have entered a wholly new world, the elegant urban north, where Isaura may pass unknown.
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A Escrava Isaura 10.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.3/